60 Responses to “Mid-Morning Links”

Again. Cops who are afraid of dogs should not be cops. If you are such a fucking coward that a guy reaching for his cell phone needs to be killed, or a dog running around his own damned yard is putting your dumb ass “in fear for your life and the lives of your fellow officers” then you are a chicken shit who needs to be flipping burgers, NOT given a gun.
GOD I hate cops.

“Const. Andrew Vanderburgh was ‘harassed and berated’ by fellow officers because on Nov. 28, 2009, he arrested and charged an off-duty police constable with impaired driving and having a blood-alcohol level over 80 milligrams, according to an internal police disciplinary ruling.”

A good cop who will, no doubt, be hounded off the force so that the thugs and derelicts can continue to have their fun without interruption. Didn’t he know that it’s ok for police to drive while intoxicated. Those DUI’s are for the little people. And in Canada, no less! Guess moving across the border doesn’t get you away from this shit. You just get single payer so you think everything is hip and progressive ; )

“As I noted in another post, we need citizens who understand laws, follow them, and accept the consequences if they inadvertently or purposefully break them. It’s called character. I’ve lived in this country for 53 years and have never been late with my income taxes. Do you think the IRS will grant me an exception if I am a day late??? I have a pretty darn good job and am pretty smart myself. So why can’t I get an exception when I accidentally break laws.

All she is doing is missing a ceremony, her life will go on. Better to learn the lesson that one needs to prepare better than to learn the lesson that if one is cute and charming they can skate through life making ‘honest’ mistakes.” — John Fox at that article.

My favorite thing about Mr. High and Mighty “I follow the law” is that he’s not even self aware enough to realize that right now he’s probably breaking several laws where the consequences of his “actions” would probably result in him quivering in the corner whining like a toddler. He’s just had the good fortune to have stayed off the radar.

Too many people in life mistake luck and good fortune for skill and talent.

Basically, there are publications out there that make your mugshot available for people to find, regardless of actual conviction, time served, or if you were later proved innocent.

Part of my thinks that banning or restricting this is a 1st Amendment violation. Shouldn’t people be free to gather information? Especially when it comes to holding agents of gov’t accountable?

But, part of me thinks that this is a violation of the 4th amendment in regards to privacy. If you argue that I shouldn’t have my mugshot available on the internet, does that validate cops and other gov’t agents to use privacy as smoke screens to investigation?

@ #18 Matt: And if you pay one of them to take down your mug shot, you will find that it’s suddenly appeared on a dozen other websites that look amazingly similar to the first one but have different URLs.

“The horrifying thing is that people have seriously discussed him as a potential president.”

I used to think we needed just one truly horrific high office holder to start waking people up at least to the point where they stop voting for the obvious sociopaths, but 8 years of Bush didn’t even make a dent. So, back in the 20th century I might have actually donated to Bloomberg’s presidential campaign as just the shock treatment the country needed, but not anymore.

There’s also the problem that the only people on the ballot these days are sociopaths.

There is no problem with a private website publishing mugshots, as that is covered under free speech and cannot be challenged. However, we can restrict police from releasing mugshots. The crime reports themselves probably should be released (public trials and all that), but I don’t think releasing the mugshots are necessary.

#18 Mugshots
A big chunk of the Mugshot Extortion racket is created by
Rob Wiggen, an ex-con from Florida, who realized these photos could be scraped from cops databases and billions could be made…. Unfortunately for me that’s where I got my DUI (FLA) and I paid the guy and his mobster friend “Carlos” $280 to take my photo off of the google top 10 photos for my name. It disappeared from one website, now I see I am back on the new bustedmugshots.com and mugshots.com, for the same stinkin arrest, so basically it’s possible I’ll end up paying extortionists for the rest of my life over a single misdemeanor. Does that sound fair?

Re: Stop & Frisk – I’m reading the book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” This is a fantastic book that I recommend to anyone who’s interested in racial justice, the “justice” system, the War on Drugs, or incarceration and post-incarceration issues. I knew the system was racist. I didn’t know just how bad it was until I started reading this book.

Turned himself in to Prince William County authorities. PWC just keeps showing up.

I was thinking the same thing.

Also, why are those bastards in Central California who A. Illegally entered a guy’s house B. arrested him without cause and then C. Fucking BROKE HIS NECK AND PERMANENTLY PARALYZED HIM not in a state or federal prison right now???

Under Indonesia’s extremely strict drugs laws, Sandiford could face execution, according to the head of Bali’s Customs and Excise Agency monitoring division, Made Wijaya.

“The main reason is because narcotics can massively endanger the young and, thus, whoever is caught with drugs should be severely punished. If three people can consume one gram of cocaine, then this operation has potentially saved up to 14,000 lives,” Wijaya told journalists at Monday’s press conference.

My first thought. Are mugshots even necessary? And if they are, could they be destroyed post-incarceration? After people have served their time they shouldn’t have a scarlet letter pinned to their chest.

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My second thought was, how is this not a violation of extortion laws? Demanding money to remove you from a website that is effectively defamation seeing as how mugshots are taken upon arrest and not conviction.

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My third thought was, If i had to choose it should be privacy over speech. A police report should still remain public but it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose to release mugshots.

So will they also ban diet drinks, or will those be okay? If so, maybe Coke and Pepsi will sell drinks with no sugar designed to have sugar added at the point of sale in the form of packets. Then Bloomberg can outlaw the sale of sugar packets and the NY cops can stop and frisk anyone seen shaking a sugar pack in plain view…

Oh, and we need to ban the home brewing or mixing of sugary drinks too! Show ID before you can buy that big container of Country Time Lemonade mix, mister!

I doubt you could argue publishing a mugshot is defamation. It’s widely known mugshots are taken upon arrest, so there’s no false implication you were convicted.

The best one could hope for is better guidelines as to the release of mugshots. Yet it seems law enforcement may prefer the release, as a way of shaming criminals. The problem is once the genie is out of the bottle, you can’t put him back — even after serving one’s time, or, for that matter, being acquitted.

Please note that the Virginia State Police investigated this incident and they declared the cop did nothing wrong.

So, either they were lying or incompetant, and they let a possible murderer walk. Remember this the next time the Virginia State Police spew some garbage about “protecting” citizens. Oh, and don’t hold your breath waiting for whoever decided this was “proper procedure” to be held accountable. Any LE agency that will cover up for a murderer with a badge cannot be trusted to police itself. Or anyone else.

True but then again the couple of sites that I looked at make no attempt to remove pictures of people who are innocent. And there are quite a few people who assume being arrest means you committed a crime. (it worked when Arpaio had his opponent arrested). Then demanding money to remove the picture suggests their intent is to shame/embarrass people so that they pay to have it removed.

But perhaps you’re right. Sleezy as this is, it wouldn’t hold water in court.

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What I meant by deleting mugshots was, taking them for internal identification purposes only. Keep them for private use only. Then once the person served their time (or found not guilty/charges dropped) delete the photo. No press released photos.

Again, whether that would/could actually work i’m not sure but then again it would require actual professionalism not “new professionalism”

and again that would never happen because press releases are so much better when you can pin a crime to a face. simply saying “John smith, 32, was arrested for possession of 3 grams of cannabis” isn’t nearly as impressive or useful. Posting a picture of some guy with messy hair and splotchy skin sends a great message that “we’re not arresting nice people. Only undesirables”

Bloomberg is an idiot. I assume he used to have half a brain when he was actually running a business, or was that all based on kissing the right butts? Did something fall on his head?

At any rate, if I ran a restaurant in NYC I’d want to be the first guy to offer “buy two medium sodas, get the second one for half off”.

I understand that the ban won’t apply to diet sodas. So does that mean that McDonald’s will give me a big cup as long as I swear at the register not to fill it with regular Coke? And if I do, will they have to forcibly restrain me from drinking it to avoid getting fined by the city?

Rules are made to be broken, especially those rules that are chickenshit in nature so as to allow qubbiling bureaucrats the power to deny Elizabeth Olivas a high school homecoming queen and class salutatorian the ability to return home (she has been in Mexico for six weeks).

She has lived in the US since age 4 and is now being punished for the “sins” of her parents.

Other Sean – It seems to be well-regarded and the info seems well-supported. It also reflects the studies and news reports that I’ve read over the years, as well as personal observations I’ve made about racial profiling and how suburban white drug crime is largely ignored. You’ll have to be more specific in your criticisms.

Every cop that shoots a dog under questionable circumstances should IMMEDIATELY be put on a 6 month unpaid “Drive Along” with the local branch of the USPS. Apparently the mailman has been NOT shooting family pets for years. Who thought it possible?

I have observed that a number of agencies have very strong passive-aggressive tendencies, immigration-related ones more so than most. Whenever there’s a clamor for them to do their job, they will go out of their way enforce the laws against the people who would be most worthy of waivers. Then when there’s a public outcry against that, they use that as an argument that the law shouldn’t be enforced against anyone.

BTW, many agencies also employ passive-aggressive budgeting: assign things that the public doesn’t want cut the *lowest* priority. That way, when there’s a call for budget cuts, the cuts will fall upon things that people don’t want cut. Then, since the public won’t let those things be cut, nothing will get cut.

•The Culpepper, Virginia cop who shot and killed Patricia Cook has been charged with murder.

A sign of the apocalypse for sure. Along with the murder charges filed against the Fullerton, CA police in the Kelly Thomas beating death, this is the only other instance I have read about where an on-duty cop acting in the line of duty has been charged with murder.

Esposito: From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now… 16 years old!
Fielding Mellish: What’s the Spanish word for straitjacket?

No one doubts that the drug war and the criminal justice system today hit with a racially disparate impact. But there is no evidence that the disparate impact is anything other than one more in a seemingly endless series of unintended consequences. The burden of proof is on the positive, and anyone claiming that racism is the “real” reason why we have a drug war would have to produce direct evidence of that. No one has.

Indeed, check out reason.com’s article yesterday on the evolution of Charlie Rangel from drug war hawk to legalization dove. They point out that, 40 years ago, it was considered racist NOT to support the drug war, because the harm of drugs was said to have a disparate impact on minorities and the urban poor.

To put in another way: If I used the same methods as Michelle Alexander, I could very easily write a 300 page book “proving” that society is at war with young men of all colors, because…

…it’s young men we put prison, it’s young men we send to Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s young men who have to pay the most for car insurance, it’s young men who beat each other up in gladiatorial contests on pay-per-view, it’s young men who have a median net worth that is X% less than elderly widows, it’s young men who so often play the fool on television sitcoms, it’s young men who have their self esteem destroyed by minstrel stereotypes like David Spade and Charlie Sheen, it’s young men who get killed on the street corners, young men who get beat up in the bars, etc.

Now just look at all those negative consequences. They must be intentional. They must!

John Stewart spent seven minutes going after Bloomberg on Thursday’s The
Daily Show. “Mr. Mayor, without these giant cups, where are homeless people
going to shit? You’re going to tell them to take two smaller shits?”

Other Sean – I read the thread, and found that I disagree with you there. We seem to be approaching this issue from vastly different perspectives. Thank you for sharing the thread and your perspective with me, though. I’m always interested in considering other points of view.